OUP (2018) p/b 444pp £25 (ISBN 9780198707004)

Efforts to animate the now deserted streets of Roman towns with people, animals and all the ephemera of daily life are not new. One only has to glance at the many novels and films set in Roman times to realise that the writers featured in this volume are travelling in a set of very well-worn cart ruts. The difference, of course, is the application of rigorous scholarship based upon detailed archaeological and textual evidence and the employment of techniques shared with specialists in a range of modern social sciences. This is a still relevant paperback version of the 2011 hardback, the aim of which was to gather together studies in previously disconnected areas, provide them with a clear theoretical framework and suggest new directions for Roman urban studies (p. vii), so that they would no longer be based solely upon sanitised 3D digital modelling and might be encouraged to shift their focus from ‘static architecture to activities and motion within urban spaces’ (p. i).

The introduction presents the themes and context of the studies and the body of the book is divided into three parts with a lengthy bibliography, short index and numerous black and white tables and illustrative photographs. 

Part One begins with an analysis of the terminology of movement and the definition of Roman cultural and civic identity in the work of Varro. It continues with a study of Martial’s portrayal of Roman daily life using techniques such as rhythm analysis of the movements of crowds in cities. Two further chapters deal with life in the streets of Pompeii and Rome, both on the practical level of the way streets related to others within a town, suggesting the typical location of shops, street fountains, brothels, taverns and baths, and also vividly recreating the sensory experience of encounters with sounds, tastes and drifting odours like the stench of tanneries and the savoury smell of sausages from the local popinae.

Part Two contains papers concerned with congestion on Roman streets caused by obstacles both everyday, like hitched mules, outdoor sales counters and water fountains, and more occasional such as religious processions, status performance by members of the elite classes and piles of equipment destined for use at public games. There are explorations of the challenges facing drivers of different types of vehicles within towns, of the kinds of animals used, the routes taken through streets and the influence of these on the placement of bars and other facilities. Also included is a study of the trend in the later first century AD for small, independent shops to give way to large complexes like Trajan’s markets; a discussion of modes of transport for wealthy households and businesses, showing from the evidence of numerous ramps and stables how common land transport actually was; and an analysis of how the position of scholae (guild buildings) on the street corners of main thoroughfares in Ostia can be used as evidence of their outward focus and high public profile.

Part Three focusses on Rome, showing its wider social networks and how movement within it was constrained by both the hilly terrain and the length of time taken to travel from one side to another. The papers in this section deal with the practical details of navigating wider and narrower city streets lacking house numbers, street signs, lighting and in some cases sidewalks or paving, bordered by multi-storey buildings and crowded by the economic activities of traders, scavengers, teachers, barbers, prostitutes, entertainers, beggars—thus facilitating the rapid spread of news and rumours. There are studies of walking, both for business and leisure in monumental portico complexes with gardens and art collections; of the changing aspect of Roman fora, comparing the original Forum Romanum as a frequented space easily accessible for making short cuts with the later imperial fora which, being less approachable because of fewer entrances and steps, force traffic detours and thus modify street networks; of gaming boards as public diversions located in highly visible places like the south east end of the Basilica Iulia; of the significant obstruction to movement through Rome caused by monumental construction and of how movement around the city gates changed over time.

The endpiece details the implications of these studies for future research and suggests directions for further exploration, envisaging work on the population of a virtual Rome with individuals engaged in meaningful activities appropriate to the time of day and their particular social networks, as well as an investigation of the networks of sea travel, leading onwards to full-blown ‘cultural histories of mobility’ (p. 401).

This widely divergent collection of papers, contributed by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, is highly specialised although, as all the Latin quotations are translated, also accessible to academics in such fields as Cultural Studies, Town Planning, Urban Geography and Sociology, from which it derives much of its specialist terminology. But it does reward persistence with a very vivid vision of the teeming streets of ancient Roman towns.

Claire Gruzelier